This invention relates to a machine for mechanical grape-harvesting.
Generally speaking, grape-harvesting machines that are already on the market are constituted by a cylindrical drum made of perforated sheet iron and by a beating coiler supplied with helicoidal blades. The beating coiler turns fast inside the walls of the cylindrical drum.
When the bunches of grapes are brought in from the opening of the machine, they are hit by the turning blades. In such a way, while the peels and the must come out from the holes of the drum to be gathered in suitable containers, grape-stalks are pushed by the propellers towards the other end, where they dump.
This known kind of machine has a remarkable disadvantage. While it treats the bunches of grapes, grape-stalks and other sorts of impurities (for instance: leaves, dry vine-tendrils, etc) are also crushed together. Consequently, the juice which is obtained is impure.
The basic object of the invention is to obviate this disadvantage by providing for a machine which harvest grapes from grape bunches and vine branches so as to obtain the must without any impurities.
Another important object of the invention is to provide for a machine that can be easily driven amid the rows of vines to receive cut-off vine-branches, avoiding the necessity to attend not only to the harvesting of the bunches of grapes and to their transport to the machine, but also to the looping off of the vine-braches.